22/02/2009

Tiles





I usually set aside Monday night for pottery practice in a small local workshop. I’m still something of a novice, but it’s good learning about glazes and skills on the wheel… the hard way. Mostly it makes a change from printing or click-clicking a mouse. I’d recommend it, though I’m still unsure whether to try something in multiple to tie in with the cards, or keep them as separate as possible.

16/02/2009

Inked Edges

Perhaps I’m easily pleased, but it gave a little thrill to see coloured page edges emerging from an Amazon package last week. Imagining untold others had passed me by, I had a one-handed search of the shelves during breakfast. Sure enough, there were a handful of drab hues (burgundy, black and something akin to moth’s wing), but it was these vintage volumes that truly paid off.
photograph of colorful ink-edged pages of vintage book volumes

A pity there’s been no discernable revival of this detailing; either on editions from bibliophilic publishers like McSweeny’s, the former Black Sparrow Press, Persephone Books, retro-obsessive book-jacket designers like Chip Kidd… or just notebooks even!

10/02/2009

Valentines





Foolishly, I cast a critical eye over my portfolio before sending it out recently and so began a weekend of rushed/radical update. Ransacking the archives (a bag in a box in a cupboard), I came across these valentines; some of 12 completed last year for Otto Trading in Japan (a curiously beneath-the-radar company considering they licence both Barbapapa and Curious George). With full-colour outside-and-in and a complete Pantone choice on envelopes, they certainly do things differently… such a pity then that our Japanese agent is soon shutting-up shop.

02/02/2009

Snow Business

Anxious Snowman
Wow, so much snow in London today! I watched the neighbours’ kids build a snowman… then sweep it into a cardboard box. Perhaps they imagined it’d keep until next year.
  
Here’s Charles Schultz, creator of Peanuts, circa 1930. It's as though his laconic, beleaguered snowman portends the characters to come.